This is my first blog post in a while, and a lot has happened since then. We just got back from our long trip for Pesach and Yam L'Yam. To start, Pesach was very cool. My dad and sister came to visit, and we went to our former cantor's husbands brother's seder near Jerusalem. The family was Sephardic, so the seder was a bit different. First of all, they used lettuce as the bitter herb, which was interesting. Also, instead of traditional charoset, my favorite Pesach food, they served a sort of date spread as charoset, which was surprisingly good anyway. The seder wasn't too long, and it was fun, even though it was done entirely in Hebrew, which I couldn't understand.

After Pesach we began our sea to sea hike, Yam L'Yam. I won't go into all the details, but essentially I spent five days hiking, cooking my own food, sleeping in tents on the ground, and not showering. It was awesome. The last day was my favorite; we biked from our campsite to the Mediterranean Sea, which was beautiful. I think the trip was important because it gave us a broader view of the land of Israel. Instead of hearing about the land from our teachers, we got to hike it and get a real feeling for the importance of this land. We also got to meet some cool Israelis and experience a truly Israeli cultural rite of passage.